Background
Similar to the title track, "i/o", Olive Tree is about being "plugged into nature and other minds". [4] Gabriel said that the song's message is about being "connected". [2] He said that people "only want to see and listen to the things that seem important and relevant to us and shut out the noise of everything else." [5] The narrative of the song is about being attuned to others' thoughts, which is expressed in Gabriel's hope that "we're no longer these islands that have our own private thoughts." [2] [3]
The basic tracks for "Olive Tree" were recorded at Gabriel's Real World Studios around 2018, with additional overdubs taking place at The Beehive and the British Grove Studios in London. Gabriel began the song with some chord ideas built around an MPC groove, which yielded the song's pre-chorus. He said that the MPC added some "muscle" to the track, which augmented a shaker and various percussion instruments recorded by Ged Lynch, who overdubbed his parts early on in the recording process. Gabriel and Oli Jacobs, who engineered the track along with Katie May, continued work on the demo, which included the pre-chorus and a different chorus that was later discarded. [6]
In 2021, a band session was arranged with David Rhodes, Tony Levin, and Manu Katché. The recording from this session was nearly two minutes longer than the final versions that appeared on the album. Gabriel explained that his modus operandi was to facilitate creativity by recording long takes to provide musicians an opportunity to open up their playing. Josh Shpak recorded his trumpet parts at his home studio in the summer of 2022. After a meeting with Gabriel and Jacobs over FaceTime, Shpak arranged a few horn parts and recorded around 15 tracks to create the impression of a "huge horn section". [6]
The cover artwork was created by Barthélémy Toguo and titled Chroniques avec la Nature, which depicts a fish and humanoid figure. [6] Unlike most of the other artwork for i/o, this cover art is an original piece, created specifically for this track. Gabriel had first met Toguo in 2015 at WOMAD, where he was serving as an artist-in-residence. Toguo's Chroniques avec la Nature was also showcased onstage for Gabriel's live performances promoting the album. [2]
In 2025, a music video created by Oranguerillatan was released to coincide with the launch of Gabriel's 50:50 platform, which was meant to facilitate engagement with visual artists by showcasing their work. Gabriel had hosted a competition around the release of i/o enlisting other artists to create a music video for one of his songs using artificial intelligence, with Oranguerillatan being one of the winners of that competition. [7] [8]
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